🚀 go-pugleaf

     In reference to the robot empire player article, I, too,
constructed an auto-player--but for earlier phases of the game.
There were actually four programs. One, meant for the regular empire
game, grabbed territory as quickly and BTU efficently as possible.
A variation for the "blitz" empire game, where BTU's are less
important, also automatically set up gold mines, banks, cities,
and both gold bar and civilian delivery routes as the expansion
was taking place.  This version rolled over it's merely human
opponents in its test games. A companion program produced a
country development "plan" after a reasonably steady state
was reached. A fourth program , never completed, redesignated
territories and set up deliveries according to the plan, as
certain criteria were met. My program also used census output
as input, but also required a map. The output of the programs
was a script of empire commands.  Controlling the whole thing
was a simple shell script which iteratively asked for a map
and a census, executed the program, caused the resulting
commands to be executed by empire, etc., indefinitely.
That part was pretty crude. There were a few minor bugs,
such a some confusion in deliveries when world "wrap-around"
occurred, but all in all the program worked pretty well.
     Alas, none of the programs did much to deter the aggressor,
except for a few token forts in some strategic positions.
     And, alas, alas, there has been no empire played at Duke
in almost a year. So all efforts for improvement ended.
			John Dallen (duke!jad)